GDC honors late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata with beautiful animated short

It has been less than a year since former Nintendo President Satoru Iwata passed away. Organizations, media, and fans alike continue to honor the man in a variety of ways. Just this past February, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences granted a posthumous lifetime achievement award to Iwata, an award that was also given by the Golden Joystick awards in 2015. All of this is warranted considering the legacy that Iwata has left behind.

It is this legacy on which a recent video presented at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) focuses. The animated short in question features Iwata coming up with ideas that would inevitably come to life in the form of video games, consoles, and peripherals. Each idea is represented in the form of a bubble that the animated version of Iwata releases into the air.

Some of the more notable ideas shown in the video are those for the Nintendo DS, the Wii and GameCube controllers, NintenDogs, Brain Training, and Kirby. While Iwata didn’t singlehandedly create any of these, he was a strong driving force behind them. The video concludes with Iwata ascending on a balloon that becomes radiant, shining a light on all of the people who were touched in one way or another by his creations.

The short features animation by Raber Umphenour, music by Shawne Benson, Chris Kohler on story consulting, and art by David Hellman. If the art style of the video seems familiar, it’s because Hellman was the artist behind Braid.